This week I focused on re-organising my notes gathered from different readings I have done and paraphrasing the important text, which I think is a key for me to write the draft literature review.
Topic 1:
<How anthropomorphism is changing the social context of modern wildlife conservation>
Anthropomorphism is a concept of humans start adding their own characteristics into non-human entities, such as animals. As people’s social value and style of their personal life had been entirely changed by the modernisation after the Second World War, the need of their seek of belongingness as human beings were getting stronger due to the growth of urbanisation, the loneliness and the lower life happiness. Thus, by putting emotions into non-human things and building up relationships with them, such as pet-keeping, it fulfils the connections while also bringing up a few issues.
<animation and America>
In the same period, the text also points out the influence of how people view their physical and material world differently had encouraged the art practice to challenge traditional orthodoxies. With constant change, they had achieved the revolution and the renovation of modernism. It is a culture to critique the contrast between the modernisation of technology and dehumanisation as a representation of ambivalence.
<Towards a Definition of American Modernism>
The text has pointed out that Modernism arised early from symbolism and impressionism, which were built up through different art forms such as symbolist and paintings they emphasise on what they have been effected emotionally through the object instead focusing on the real thing. They explore beyond world structure under the positivism while sharing more unpredictable experience from human perception.
<animation and America>
Correspondingly, the pervasive anthropomorphic characters in variety of media support audiences to explore different scenarios through changing identities, metamorphosis, dehumanising and restructuring themselves in the story; without bounding into any industrial orthodoxies, they are living in an uncertain reality and working for the need of gags to structure more possibilities and values.
Talk about how the abstractions inspire the appearance of anthropomorphic characters. Animation and American, p20, the animator pioneers under the time experiment the limits of graphic space, ‘playing out narration of perception and memory in rapid metamorphosis.’ They play ‘lines, shapes, forms in the enunciation of time, space, weight and flow.’
Topic 2:
Anthropomorphic characters which created to expose the political issues are as an important example to show the sprit of modernism in different work.
<Animation and American: p22, >the abstraction of anthropomorphism in early American animation achieved through developing technologies in the industry, which explores the relationship between humanity and animality and the expression of humans after being challenged. It reflect the possible lack of humanity in society, philosophy and mechanisation.
<Symbols, metaphors and similes in literature: A case study of “Animal Farm”: p23>
The characters in Animal Farm were created by the author as metaphors for the Soviet Union leaders, of the Russian revolution in beginning of the 20 century. Based on the analysis of characters in the story, the text found the resemblances of characters of the government’s leaders at the time to the animals found in the story. Such as the boar napoleon represents ruthless and authoritarian Joseph Stalin between 1920s to 1950s, the old Major from the first chapter represents the revolutionary and idealistic Vladimir Lenin between late 1910s and early 1920s.
<Character Metaphors in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, p84-86>:
Similarly, the text here also points out the metaphors of the anthropomorphic animals in the original novel. Such as the most prestigious boars in the farm, Snowball and Napoleon, which are always arguing on their ideas are representing the confrontation between Stalin and Trotsky within the soviet power to fight for the president position. Though, napoleon was more successful by expelling Snowball in the story with the help of nine enormous dog and crafty squealer, in response to the committee for State Security and the Soviet official party paper.
<Revolution on Animal Farm: Orwell’s Neglected Commentary>:
Overall the story emphasis on the difficulties and dangers of the socialist revolution. In the story when pigs brought the apples into their harness room by assuming themselves are the most important brainworker in the farm while slowly formed up their own dictatorship in chapter 3 (p38-39), the failure of any other animal’s protest with their pessimistic attitude became an abandon to the spirit of their animalism in the book. Quoting the text ‘if people outside still thought that that particular form of revolution could succeed without betraying its goals, nothing new could be accomplished (p137)’, the idealisation originally structured by the old Major had completely be destroyed by pigs and their Stalinism from the seven commandments had eventually turned into one to permit the hierarchy of animals in their farm. The text also summarises the author’s idea that in the face revolutionary change toward socialism, true success can only be achieved only when everyone contributes their effort for themselves and protect their initial resolutions. Otherwise the power-hunger group could easily disrupt the equilibrium, like how the apples had been unfairly taken away by pigs in the story.
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As Orwell mentioned, he was keen to write a story which could be easily translated into other languages and being understood by a wide range of readers (p131). In its animated form, the animals build up connections with audiences through their performances, and with no explicit political references under the sensitive topics, their behaviour becomes a core internal sources to be focused and reviewed. The film highlights their foibles and flaws, allowing viewers to interpret deeper meanings through the lens of animal characteristics.
Topic 3:
Towards the end of the last century, animation companies started embedding the concept of anthropomorphism into the creation of their hyper-realistic and cartoon characters, influenced by the background of modernism. A few well known examples include the beast from the beauty and the beast, samba from the lion king and the Micky Mouse from its series.
<Animation and American: p23, >Scholars Patrick D. Murphy and Richard Schickel argued these characters hide their natural terrors or wildness through cuteness, joke and musical cues in the performance, which can be way more ideal for the story-telling.
Whereas, their figures blended with ‘sentimental modernism’, a term pointed out by Steven Watt <p24.>, a way where characters mix their complex emotions and human-like trait together work well for gags in films.
<Understanding Animation: p129,> In the early ‘trick’ films, audiences were mostly unallied with characters which create random humours as gags in a story with a lack of continuity and empathy. However, the added human personalities and emotional depth of anthropomorphic characters allow audiences to be emotionally attached by the way how stories are being told sentimentally and how their characteristics are being expressed freely.
A few examples can be found in the early short films created by Windsor McCay,by combining with key elements of building up personalised characters in films mentioning in <Understanding Animation: p129-130,>:
- Eye contact between characters and audiences to break up the 4th wall.
- Facial expressions to deliver emotions and expressions.
- Recognised physical poses in the set.
- Clear motivation set and acted by the anthropomorphic character itself within narrations.
- Physical rhythms indicate the attitude of the character.
- The character is taking responsibility of the film as an actor.
Here are my studies:
1: Mosquito in ‘How a mosquito operates (1912)’
This surreal short animation features an anthropomorphic mosquito dressed in a business suit, sneaking into a chubby man’s room, obsessively sucking his blood in an addictive way while he is in a deep sleep, and eventually bursting himself due to its overindulgence.
Through the whole story, we can easily identify the mosquito’s body language such as observing the lock with his eyes carefully, and rubbing his hands in a manner of diligence. When he is lightly patting his hat, he also turns its face into the audiences and then showing his playful excitement and pride of catching such a human prey.
His physical rhythm can be easily followed up by seeing the beat of his needle-like proboscis. His determination has been emphasised through multiple attempts of piercing its needle into the man’s skin in a persistent way.
When he is full with an exaggerated grotesque tummy, audiences could easily sympathise his physical discomfort, leading to a feeling of both amusement and unease at his tragicomic ending due to all the similar human traits.
2: Dinosaur in’ Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)’
This influential short animation displays the interaction between the creator Winsor McCay, and his animated dinosaur, Gertie, set in a dinner time, surrounding by the other gentlemen to watch their performance.
Gertie, an anthropomorphic figure which is highly reflective in human’s emotion through its physical responses to McCay’s commands. She easily breaks the fourth wall by performing bow to the audiences and is being playful itself to follow the instructions in a charm manner.
Gertie can do different physical poses such as raising feet, shaking its bodies and moving around with surprising expressiveness to show its characterisation.
Also, she cries when McCay blames on her of being distracted by the sea serpent appearing in the scene, and bearing grudges with the jumbo by attacking the latter back to show the emotional depth.
Overall, her spirit of sentimental modernism is displayed through emotionally engaging with the creator McCay and showing her human traits of being childish, naughty and innocent in the scene. She brought humour to the narrative and gaining affection from audiences to the story, and eventually making people to remember her in the animation history.
To conclude, Winsor McCay’s successful use of ‘caricature’ and ‘exaggeration’ in anthropomorphic characters deliver a strong sense of natural shortcomings from their internal sources, this anti-stereotype of traditional gags had been studied by Disney films at the same time (understanding animation, P130). Which helps audiences to identify the weaknesses and strengths of human traits and hence being impressed by the creation of figures. Also, Disney tried to adopt the working process which used by Windsor McCay into Ub Iwerks creation, instead of drawing from one image to the next one, he tended to add ‘in-between’ in the middle of two ‘extreme’ poses. (Animation and American, P21).
Topic 4:
Though the concept of anthropomorphism brought a lot of benefits to the creation of art, it is undeniable there are potential risk, destabilisation, and immorality of applying it to our media in the real life.
<Popular Media and Animals> first chapter:
The text indicates anthropomorphic narratives of animals are in an important position for popular media industries and define most animal issues in publicity.
However, the strongly use of anthropomorphism from the human perspective to describe the plight of them in either soft news or hard news is structured to gain emotional reaction from audiences in popular media, and boost the sale.
Hence, Steve baker argues those animals within popular culture themselves, are not being treated respectfully, instead they symbolise the dismissive treatment of the farm in a trivialising and amusing way for the publications.
And, their reality received by audiences are being addressed mainly through representations to control the influence of the business.
In the film industries, real animals have always been strongly exploited, specially through merchandising the product and entertaining the audiences.
<Popular Media and Animals> third chapter:
Animal stars were especially crucial in the mid-twentieth American film industry, they embedded human traits for the marketable functions and represented cultural stereotypes for audiences to consume(p55-56).
In studio under Hollywood such as MGM, it had a specific system for training and producing animal related films and products (p51-52), animals were correspondingly becoming part of their physical capitals.
Jackie the Hollywood MGM lion, one of the animal stars was absolute a moneymaking of the business, has been strongly pressured by Hollywood films for his entire life.
After the inspiration and success of ‘gimmick pictures’, centring animals and chap production produced by universal-international studio, Jackie had been used to compete it in ‘Fearless Fagan, the wandering lion’.
Poor Jackie had to passively work in a toxic environment, they structured him as a figure or orphan initially to attract the support of the community, after he had been rescued from the Mills Bros. Circus; they focused on ways to generate the revenue such as releasing peanuts merchandise and pictured him with other famous stars; his natural animality of lion had been replaced by gentleness and sensitivity in his characters while he was over 400 pounds, and his film critics will be only relied on his performances instead of his animal natures.
<Popular Media and Animals> second chapter:
Also, animal testing was becoming more popular after the second war due to the development of science and medicine, therefore the post-war west are more reliant on the constant exploitation of animals.
Readers of the newspaper based on the cases formed national pets club in 1957, they set strong influence on the vivisection around the world.
However, proponents of animal rights movement tried to split them from the identity of ‘animal lovers’ by the end of 20th century due to their excessive emotional sympathy towards animal potentially led to the acts of terrorism.
As mentioned by Peter Singer in his text, the protest raised up by emotional ‘animal-lovers’ has excluded the true issue being discussed in serious political and moral debates, as their extreme actions only lead to negative stereotypes and the marginalisation to the society.